Real NOS PAF era plain enamel wire....

[Possum]

I've been looking for an actual NOS roll of plain enamel since I began making pickups almost ten years ago now, never saw one in all that time. Finally scored a small roll of it for unbelievable cost, and its in windable condition. A couple years ago Elektrisola did lab analyses of samples of every vintage plain enamel pickup I ever rewound, from the wire I saved. This covered from about 1938 up til late 70's, and also samples of every modern version of PE since 2002, most of which isn't made anymore. The lab results were real interesting, so now I have something thats never been wound and am going to wind a set of my HD PAF's with this stuff to compare directly to what we are buying now. Luckily this vintage PE is the exact diameter of the wire I took of many old PAF's, I took the paper off for the first time last nite, the insulation is a little oxidized on the outer layers of the roll, but its all useable. Going to be a fascinating experiment to do and finally know if there's anything very special (or not) about that wire. Modern wire has few similarities, so will be fascinating, once and for all to actually hear new coils with real vintage wire vs. modern. Photos below and a couple other vintage wire spools in heavy formvar, nylon, and a red enamel, all from that era had steel or aluminum cast spools.

[Stratz]

My Father has boxes of old PE from the 50's-60's and probably older than that. Some have aluminum spools with wooden inserts on the tops. Many different brands and quite a bit from Mr Fullerton himself.

I remember giving him a 7lb spool of 42 poly some years back. I thought he was going to throw it at me
I doubt he's even taken the paper off of it to this day.

Good luck with it. I hope it's fairly consistent

[Ward]

Bastards

[belwar]

Really cool possum. Great find

[big_teee]

Neat find, I'm happy for you!
But, Is that really gonna makem sound any better???
T

[Ward]

Neat find, I'm happy for you!
But, Is that really gonna makem sound any better???
T

We'll know in 6 months.

[Possum]

Stratz, does he want to get rid of some of it?
Yep, thats the BIG question, does it sound better, no different, or worse than modern wire? I suspect that one of my theories will be proven wrong, exactly opposite of what I've thought for years, but we'll see, probably this weekend if I get time....

[SonnyW]

I've been looking for an actual NOS roll of plain enamel since I began making pickups almost ten years ago now, never saw one in all that time. Finally scored a small roll of it for unbelievable cost, and its in windable condition. A couple years ago Elektrisola did lab analyses of samples of every vintage plain enamel pickup I ever rewound, from the wire I saved. This covered from about 1938 up til late 70's, and also samples of every modern version of PE since 2002, most of which isn't made anymore. The lab results were real interesting, so now I have something thats never been wound and am going to wind a set of my HD PAF's with this stuff to compare directly to what we are buying now. Luckily this vintage PE is the exact diameter of the wire I took of many old PAF's, I took the paper off for the first time last nite, the insulation is a little oxidized on the outer layers of the roll, but its all useable. Going to be a fascinating experiment to do and finally know if there's anything very special (or not) about that wire. Modern wire has few similarities, so will be fascinating, once and for all to actually hear new coils with real vintage wire vs. modern. Photos below and a couple other vintage wire spools in heavy formvar, nylon, and a red enamel, all from that era had steel or aluminum cast spools.

There was one roll about a pound on ebay last week. I bid on it but didn't get it. It went for about $256.

Old Spool of 42 AWG PE (Plain Enamel) Copper Magnet Wire - 1 Pound | eBay

Were you the so and so that beat me out on this one Possum? Lucky you.

[Ward]

Looks mighty familiar. The price though

[Stratz]

Stratz, does he want to get rid of some of it?

The only reason he's had the wire (along with speaker boxes full of old Fender forbon flatwork, cloth bags of different size Alnico rod, etc) for 50+ years is because he promised the person that gave it to him that he would never sell any of it.
My father is a smart guy. He knows not too give me too much of it at once.

When the day comes when it does become mine I doubt I could sell it either.

[Ward]

When the day comes when it does become mine I doubt I could sell it either.

Except maybe to me

[Stratz]

Looks mighty familiar. The price though

CT used to be the magnet wire capitol of the world. Viking, New Milford, Winco and many more.

I've done vintage rewinds with Winco PE. The stuff I used wasn't a good color match for vintage Fender, don't know about Gibson or others. Sounded ok though.

[JGundry]

Cool find. The last stuff like this I ran across was 80+ lbs. of 44AWG PE wire from the 50's. Wrong size for what I make though. I did get some spools of old Essex and GE heavy Formvar in 42AWG and 43AWG. I have run across NOS wire 4 different times. Three of the four were people that I bought winding machines from and I just asked if they had wire old wire to sell when I bought the winders. Two different places had a lot of wire in different sizes. The 42AWG PE seems to be harder to find than Formvar 42 AWG and 38AWG wire. There are a lot of wire makers from the 50's that are gone like Winco, Anaconda, Viking.....

If you have any variety of wire to test what you will see is the old 42 AWG wire varies in diameter from .00255 to .0028 and varies in ohms per foot from about 1.74K to 1.88K per foot. Post the diameter and the ohms per foot on the forum when you get a chance.

[Stratz]

Except maybe to me

Well, I couldn't rightly sell it. I could give you some though

It can be a pain in the ass to work with... not really a big deal. If it were I'd be using it.

[Ward]

Well, I couldn't rightly sell it. I could give you some though

What a guy